


Quake

by Spylace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Returns, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Credits Scene, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Hello AO3 tag system, Mind Control, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, You Have Been Warned, a fix-it of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6785752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six conversations with James Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quake

**Author's Note:**

> Plays fast and loose with MCU timeline. Spoilers up to Captain America: Civil War.

Black Widow

Barnes sits out in the open with paper spread on his lap. He chases the words with his fingers as he would track a target before moving on to the next article. He is farsighted; a potential weakness to exploit. She sits next to him on the far side of the bench because she has already been made.

“Did he take it?” He asks, following Dow Jones’ less than graceful tumble into the sixteen-thousands.

“He won’t stop looking for you, you know.”

“He won’t find anything.” Barnes says curtly.

Two days ago, she might have even agreed. But Captain America, Steve, is a friend. The first one to say so since Clint. In her line of work, you keep your friends or you kill them. She pushes her lower lip into a facsimile of a smile.

“You don’t believe that.”

His eyes cut to her beneath her cap. If he had been a marked to be seduced, she would have compared the colors to Monet or Pavel Kuznetsov’s _Голубой фонтан_. The Winter Soldier is a legendary assassin. She doesn’t delude herself into thinking that she can win.

“Optimism.” He comments with a private laugh. His teeth gleams against the flesh of his lips. “From you Romanova? That’s good. Means you’re human.”

Her stomach twists into knots.

“Will that be all?”

“Just about.” Barnes slides a file between them. It’s unlabeled but for the red star at its center. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

 

Spiderman

Peter braces himself for a blow that never ends.

It’s July. School’s out. But Peter tutors the little kids in the mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s a sweet gig all things considered. He gets free reign of the computer lab in the mornings. And wow, let’s not forget the air conditioning. If he runs foul of Bobby, who landed summer school, and the rest of the football team, he can run. But he’s pushed, shoved, kicked and cornered against a garbage can at the back of the school. Not that he isn’t well-acquainted with the bottom of Bobby’s two-hundred dollar Nikes, but he was kind of hoping to avoid that today.

When nothing happens, he peels back one eye. He’s surprised to see the man standing over him. The man seems just as surprised. He looks dirty and unkempt but not like he forgot to shower or anything. Peter gets this weirdest urge to take him home and offer some of Aunt May’s meatloaf, or something.

“Hey man,” Bobby bristles, making a show of dusting off his jacket. “This isn’t any of your business.”

Oh snap, he’d forgotten they were still there. Peter shrinks back against the dent in the garbage can.

“Yeah, whatchu got there anyway?” Zeke opens the man’s backpack. It’s a battered thing that looks like it’s gotten in and out of warzones and worse. He’s probably hoping for prescription pills or drugs or alcohol. What he finds is stacks of paper held together with paperclips and rubber band. Peter looks on in horror as it’s flung carelessly on the ground.

The man moves.

Zeke screams. Unnaturally high, Peter notes, even for a pubescent male. It ends with a quiet snap like twigs bent in half. The others hightail it out of there and Zeke limps off, crying like a baby. When Peter looks at him, the man shrugs, “It’s just an arm.”

Fear is a survival instinct. Strangely, Peter can’t bring himself to be afraid of this guy. Maybe that takes him out of running as a candidate in the human genome and maybe that's okay because the man bends down. Slowly. Hands shaking as he dusts off the sheaves of paper. When Peter tries to pick up a clipping of Captain America, the man grabs him by the wrist, not hard but firm. He hastily explains, “Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay. I... I’m just trying to help.”

The man gives him a suspicious glare.

“Oh, uh, okay, no touching, got it.”

The guy had a really neat handwriting. He’s not looking but it’s really hard to unsee words like ‘Shield’, ‘Hydra’, ‘Avengers’, and ‘Captain America’.

“So um, thanks by the way, for helping me...?”

“Just.” The man coughs. “Looking out for the little guy.”

Peter wilts.

The last thing the man picks up are these wicked-looking goggles. He hesitates as he traces a finger around the lens and hands it to him.

“Here, it’s a gift.” When Peter doesn’t take them immediately, he drops it in his lap. “Keep it.”

“Um, thank you?” He holds them to his face and says, “Woah. Thanks...?”

The man is gone.

Bummer. He didn’t even get his name.

 

Falcon

Stark had been gone for more than a week. Sam knew because he is keeping track and he is starting to realize that sending Stark after Steve might not have been the best idea. He takes comfort in the fact that they aren’t neighbors _yet_. Defying Ross has its limits and he is honestly getting sick of turning his back when the entire cell could be rotated to the Ross’s smug face. How is this his life?

So while Barton bemoans the fact that his oldest, Lily, had a birthday coming up and he should have bought her a pony—a real one, not Applejack or Fluttershy but a bona fide living, breathing pony—beforehand, Sam tries to cheer himself with the thought that no news was good news.

It doesn’t work.

In films, flickering lights usually meant something. He sees Barton look up and Lang smash his face against the reinforced glass. Sam feels his face split wide around the still-healing bruises.

“Man,” He laughs, “Am I glad to see you. What the hell took you so long?”

“Well,” Steve shrugs with a self-depreciating smile. “Had a couple of detours to make.”

“Barnes.” Sam nods to the shadow behind the man. Alarms blare but no one comes running. The air inside the cell is the same as the air outside—who knew. “How did you find us anyway?” He asks as Barton skips to the adjacent cell to check on Wanda. Her head lolls, her eyes blown with whatever toxic cocktail pumped into her blood the hour before.

Barnes grunts in response. Steve translates, “This is a former Hydra cell. Used to keep all kinds in here before the Secretary of State cleaned it up.”

He knocks shoulders with Steve and asks, “You okay man?”

“It’s been a long week.”

When he asks Barnes the same question, he honestly expects the thousand-yard stare and a ‘fuck off’ in not so many words. So he’s surprised when Barnes answers simply, “tired”.

“Amen brother, amen.”

 

Black Panther

“Why the need for subterfuge?” T’Challa asks in the interest of diplomacy after the Captain leaves, trusting the life of his soulmate to one that once sought to end it. He feels oddly humbled by the man’s conviction and waits patiently as Barnes coughs the last of the frost from his lungs. Assistance, when offered, are refused. Barnes greedily smothers his face against his towel and breathes. Here, T’Challa feels a twinge of sympathy. He had glimpsed the facilities Zemo said the soldiers went in their sleep. It was unpleasant.

Barnes’ breathing slows. He asks again when he could look him in the eyes and see the faults in them like cracks across the brittle ice.

“I think it’s pretty obvious.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Stevie...” Barnes smiles. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man wear an expression other than exhausted grief. “He’s going to save the world. He’ll need help. The Avengers are his family. ‘S my fault. He needs the Avengers. I’ll just get in the way.”

“He loves you.” T’Challa reminds him. “He would walk to the ends of the world for you. And you dismiss him so easily.”

“’m trying to keep him safe.” Barnes taps the side of his head and smirks, “The stuff in my head, I think we both know it’s permanent.”

For a moment, T’Challa feels terribly young under the man’s silver-edged gaze. He consulted his doctors. There is no frame of reference to understand the form of indoctrination Barnes was subject to. Some had even hypothesized that it was in the realm of mind control.

“Will you not try? For your friend?”

“I can’t.” Barnes says resolutely. “I won’t see him fall.”

 

Vision

When he is forced on his knees, Sergeant James Barnes spits, “You’re outnumbered, outmatched. That thing can see you coming from a mile away and the absolute worst thing you can do is to go up to it swinging.” The man adds with a touch of pity. “You’re almost as bad as _Steve._ ”

Vision takes the compliment where he can. “Then what do you suggest? That I stand here watching the others fail one by one...” Like Sir. Like Wanda.

“Look, Thor tried. An army couldn’t bring this guy down.”

“And you think you can. You, an ordinary human, not even gifted.”

“Exactly.”

Vision skims the thoughts from his mind and staggers at the weight of it. It only takes him a split second to make a decision. He knows that it is the correct decision.

“Why did you come to me Sergeant?”

Barnes shrugs.

“That rock on your forehead. It’s what made me, you know that? It didn’t give me special powers or nothin’ but it put the stuff in my head and pinned them up so they wouldn’t fall out.”

 _Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car_ —A morbid countdown.

These are not the words associated with an assassin. They are a promise.

Barnes shudders with each word. Precipitation gathers above his eyebrows and he grits his teeth to dam the screams.

Vision sees the way synapses fire, lighting neural pathways in brilliant vermilion light that danced to the mindstone’s will. He sees how the magic denies this man his freedom, his liberty and free will and feels foreign shame and doubt which had failed to plague him when he shot down Colonel Rhodes.

“ _Ready to comply._ ”

The soldier makes no eye contact. He is unnaturally still. Hydra believed that the one man, in the right place at the right time, could be better than an army. So Vision gives him the orders. The mindstone burns.

 

Thanos

The distinction piques his curiosity long enough to stay his hand. The insect stares in daze, his right eye blown into the wide rings of Saturn against the white. Thanos the Eternal, Thanos the Mad Titan, is pleased to receive his fear. But along with that fear is acceptance and even, joy.

“Are you not afraid to die?”

“Nah,” The boy licks his lips before grinning around the blunted edge of his mouth. “Shoulda kicked it a long time ago. Death’s just taking a jolly good time to collect.”

Death is an unparalleled seductress. Perhaps the boy is one of her paramours. Thanos sees her mark on him, smeared dark like an oil slick from his ear to his shoulder. He will be a magnificent gift. Thanos catches the metal disk without a thought and tosses it aside. The cries of despair do not interest him. It fades into white noise even as the boy cranes his head, painting the gold of the infinity gauntlet in the lurid shade of the Aether.

“Then why do you persist? Why not lay down like the rest of your brethren?”

“Cuz I ain’t doin’ this for myself.” The boy answers. “I’m doing this for him. The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight.” He coughs when Thanos squeezes, breath turning into whisper. “ _I’m doin’ this for him_.”

His arm is detached it a spray of black ink. Thanos feels his mouth warp into a smile. “Interesting.” The infinity gauntlet is quickly recovered by the sorcerer and cast away from his mind’s eye. He blocks against the Asgardian and discovers too late, his missing limb.

Mjolnir sings against his violet hide. It resonates across the universe.

“War,” Thanos names the boy. “Next time I shall not be so lenient.”

Thanos melts back into space, graceful in defeat.

Next time, he will present Death her horsemen on a promethium plate.

**Author's Note:**

> So the part with Thanos is how I presume Avengers: Infinity Wars will play out. Thanos is jealous of his mistress’s attentions and decides that the Avengers and by extension, Earth, lives another day. Lives are saved hurrah, the Winter Soldier is too pretty to die, the works. So everyone packs up and goes home. The epilogue, the original +1 part (this was supposed to be 5+1) was supposed to be Steve finding Bucky back in Bucharest in another tiny apartment with heating issues and peeling wall paper that’s not unlike the home they made in Brooklyn and they basically have massive feelings about it. And since it’s been a year and a half since I’ve dipped my toes in this fandom, I’m going to take the plunge and read all the accrued material since then. Thanks for reading. Bye.


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